Colorado Tundra Poster

Ivory color border with black text. CUSTOMIZE IT: choose your size, change the border color or change the text! Photography by Minerva Bloom. This is part of the alpine trail at the mountain summit in Independence Pass. There are no trees in the uplands because of low temperatures and short growing seasons. The tundra is the vegetation composed of dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, mosses, and lichens. The Independence Pass is a high mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains at 12,000+ feet at the summit of the ridge of the Sawatch Range between Aspen and Leadville in central Colorado. The pass connects the upper valley of the Roaring Fork River upstream from Aspen with the headwaters of the Arkansas River near Leadville. The pass is traversed by State Highway 82 and is the second-highest paved mountain pass in Colorado. The top of the pass is well above the tree line as can be seen in here, and the terrain type at the top is Tundra. The pass is always closed in winter, from the first heavy snow fall in autumn, often opening only in late May.